Contents

My mom told me once that when you're afraid of something, what you want more than anything else is to make it go away. You want your life back to the way it was before you found out that there was something to be afraid of. You want to build a high wall and live your old life behind it. But nothing ever stays the same. That's not your old life at all. That's your new life with a wall around it. Your choice is not about going back to the way things were. Your choice is about hiding, or about going right to the heart of the thing that scares you.

Sometimes the best way to move into the unknown is to take familiar steps, small steps. To do ordinary things to deal with something that is in no way ordinary. We're always going someplace new, all the time. Familiar things just let us pretend that we aren't moving into unfamiliar territory. You take those small familiar steps, and you try to be honest, not to live as if nothing had changed but still to go on with your life. But there are times when what you need is a piece of how things used to be.

When you're little, you like to think you know everything, but the last thing you really want is to know too much. What you really want is for grown-ups to make the world a safe place where dreams can come true and promises are never broken. And when you're little, it doesn't seem like a lot to ask.

I didn't ask for any of this. I want to be a little girl. I just want to be a little girl.

Everyone knows not to stare into the sun; it's something your mother tells you when you're a kid. "Don't look at the sun or you'll go blind." But sometimes you want to understand something so badly that you'll risk going blind for just a glimpse of what it might all be about.

Even when we know we'll never find the answers, we have to keep on asking questions.

My grandfather used to tell my mom that kids should never have to worry about anything more serious than baseball. Everything you need to know is there. It has success and failure, moments when you come together and moments where you stand alone. And it has an ending. Not a clock, like in other sports, but an ending. And that, my grandfather said to my mom, is as close as a kid should have to come to that sort of thing.

People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is to always see things for what they really are. But everything we do, every plan we make, is kind of a lie. We're closing our eyes and pretending that the day won't ever come when we won't need to make any more plans. Hope is the biggest lie there is, and it is the best. We have to keep going as if it all mattered, or else we wouldn't keep going at all.

People say that when we grow up, we kick at everything we've been told, we rebel against the world our parents worked so hard to bring us into, that part of growing of is kicking at the ties that bind. But I don't think that's why we kick at all. I think we kick when we find out that our parents don't know much more about the world than we do. They don't have all the answers. We rebel when we find out that they've been lying to us all along, that there isn't any Santa Claus at all.

Is every moment of our lives built into us before we're born? If it is, does that make us less responsible for the things we do? Or is the responsibility built in too? After you hit the ball, do you stand and wait to see if it goes out, or do you start running and let nature take its course?

The hardest thing you'll ever learn is how to say goodbye.

What makes a man who he is? Is it the worst things he's ever done, or the best things he wants to be? When you find yourself in the middle of your life and you're nowhere near of where you were going, how do you find the way from the person you've become to the one you know you could have been?

When everything in your life is right on track, it's easy to believe that things happen for a reason; it's easy to have faith. But when things start to go wrong then it's very hard to hold on to that faith. It's hard not to wonder whose reasons these things happen for.

My mother always talked to me a lot about the sky. She liked to watch the clouds in the day, and the stars at night... especially the stars. We would play a game sometimes, a game called, what's beyond the sky. We would imagine darkness, or a blinding light, or something else that we didn't know how to name. But of course, that was just a game. There's nothing beyond the sky. The sky just is, and it goes on and on, and we'll play all of our games beneath it.

Most people change kind of slowly. They're who they are and then after a while, they're someone else. But some people know the exact moment where their lives changed. They saw the person they were going to marry or the look in their baby's eyes the first time he smiled. For some people, it's not the good things in life that made them change. It's something they've gone through that makes everything they look at from that moment on seem very different from how it had always been.

People are lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. Some people have something in their disposition. Maybe they were just born too mean, or maybe they were born too tender. But most people are brought to where they are by circumstance, by calamity or a broken heart or something else happening in their lives that wasn't anything they planned on. People are lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. The one thing that I do know is, it doesn't matter what any one of them might tell you--nobody wants to be alone.

Some people have given up all hope of anything in their lives every changing. They just go on with it day by day, and if something were to come along and make things different they probably wouldn't even notice it right off, except for that kind of nervous feeling you get in your stomach. My mom and I used to call that "the car trip feeling," because it was how I'd feel whenever I knew we were going to go somewhere far away or somewhere new.

When you're a kid, all you ever want is for the stories your mom reads you to be true. You think you can crawl inside the world that's in every book and live in the pictures on every page, but deep down you know that this isn't something that could ever happen. And it's knowing that the magic isn't quite there, that it's just over the next hill or maybe in the next story, that makes you feel safe in your bed at night. You really wouldn't want it to be any other way.

There are times when it seems like the whole world is afraid...when the fear is something you have to live with day in day out. When people get scared, they do a lot of different things. They fight, or they run, they destroy the thing they're afraid of, or they put a lot of distance between it and them...make it something you can shoot at with a friction-action gun.

Why do people want so desperately not to be alone? Why is it more comforting to think you are being watched than to know that no one at all is watching? And why, really, does that make us any less alone? In the end, if there are others out there, then wouldn't we be, all of us, still alone together?

People believe what they want to believe. They find meaning where they can, and they cling to it. In the end, it really doesn't matter what's a trick and what's true. What matters is that people believe.

People like to examine the things that frighten them, to look at them and give them names, so saints look for God, and scientists look for evidence. They're both just trying to take away the mystery, to take away the fear.

We all like to think that we have some control over the events in our lives, and a lot of the time we can fool ourselves into thinking that we really are in charge. But then something happens to remind us that the world runs by its own rules and not ours and that we're just along for the ride.

You know in cartoons, the way someone can run off a cliff and they're fine, they don't fall until they look down? My mom always said that was the secret of life. Never look down. But it's more than that. It's not just about not looking. It's about not ever realizing that you're in the middle of the air and you don't know how to fly.

The world is made up of the big things that happen and the small ones. And the part that's so unfair is that we call them "big" and "small", because when something happens to you, when you lose something or someone that you really care about, that's all there is. The world may be blowing up around you, but you don't care about that. You don't care about that at all.

I have this idea about why people do the terrible things they do. Same reason little kids push each other on the schoolyard. If you're the one doing the pushing, then you're not going to be the one who gets pushed. If you're the monster, then nothing will be waiting in the shadows to jump out at you. It's pretty simple, really. People do the terrible things they do because they're scared.

We're all standing on the edge of a cliff, all the time, every day, a cliff we're all going over. Our choice isn't about that. Our choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to fall."

If a dream is just a dream, something that happens in your mind while you're asleep, then that's alright. It's yours to take with you into the morning, and it fades away there in the light. But when the dreams start to come while you're awake, and they come with the light, then that is not all right. What we look for then is other people who have dreamed what we've dreamed, who have seen what we've seen. When the dreams become real, sometimes the only comfort you can find is in knowing that you're not alone.

I think when you're older, what gets hard is that you forget how to take things as they come. And sometimes, the things that do come are more than anyone should have to take.

People come home for a lot of reasons. They come home to remember. They come home because they’ve got nowhere else to go. They come home when they’re beaten. They come home when they’re proud. They come home looking for a door out into their past or a road out into their future. They come home for a lot of reasons, but they always come home to say goodbye.

Some people put a lot of work into their lawn, as if a patch of green grass was the most important thing in the world. As if they thought that as long as the lawn out front was green and mowed and beautiful, it wouldn't matter at all what was going on inside of the house.

Do you know the feeling of daring yourself to walk across a dark room? That way you're excited, because you know, you really do know that there's nothing there to hurt you. Some people get to chose their dark rooms. They get to look for places where the fear is only skin deep, but some people are nowhere near that lucky.

People move through their lives sometimes without really thinking about where they're going. Days pile up, and they get sadder and lonelier without really knowing why they're so sad or how they got so lonely. Then something happens. They meet someone who looks a certain way or has something in their smile. Maybe that's all that falling in love is; finding someone who makes you feel a little less alone.

Sometimes people come to a moment where they think they've found that one last chance to be someone else. And they go for it. When it doesn't work out, they spend the rest of their lives looking back over their shoulder at what might've been.

How do you let someone go? How do you understand that's alright, that everything changes? How do you find a way for that to make you feel good about life, instead of breaking your heart? The hardest thing you'll ever learn is how to say goodbye.

I think people get mean when they're scared.

I don’t know what will happen next. I don’t know what I’m going to be, what I’m going to learn. But what I do know is this: Life, all life, is about asking questions not about knowing answers. It is wanting to see what’s over the next hill that keeps us all going. We have to keep asking questions, wanting to understand. Even though we know we’ll never find the answers, we have to keep on asking the questions.

[Mary is using her laptop, when a video file of Chet appears] Hiya, Tootz. I programmed this video file to send itself in twenty-four hours if I didn't delete it. I didn't delete it, so I guess you must've deleted me... Yeah, I sorta saw that one coming.

[to Allie Keys] Little girl, I love the way your mind works.

[to Mary, after his death] There's something I wanted to share with you. We're all so desperate for meaning, aren't we? All of us. You too, Mary, even if you think you're not. You want answers, and in that way, I think the aliens are gonna disappoint you. Here's the stone truth of it: They're still asking the same questions we are. No one is God here. We're all in the same boat.

Maj. Owen Crawford: Between their preponderancy to intervene in our affairs, and the growing incompetence of NASA, I'd choose NASA... what?

Eric Crawford: If you were still in charge of the project, you'd use this as evidence of an imminent alien threat.

Maj. Owen Crawford: Probably.

Owen Crawford: Boys...you must be done with all your homework.

Sam Crawford: We just wanted to listen to some music first.

Owen Crawford: You always could do your homework at the last minute...but you're setting a bad example for your big brother. [to Eric] And don't look so bent out of shape, you're not the straight-A student, you're not the one who can afford to spend an evening by the record player-

Eric Crawford: I finished my homework at the library, Sir.

Maj. Owen Crawford: Can you imagine what would have happened to people if, in 1947, they thought that we were going to be invaded by aliens?

Sam Crawford: Gee, I don't know... growth of the military-industrial complex? Trials to see if you were an alien sympathizer?

Mary Crawford: I know what you're thinking. You're saying to yourself, "I can get the girl by myself. Why do I need this bitch in the mix?"

General Beers: I prefer not to use the term "in the mix."

Allie Keys: Can I ask you something?

Captain Walker: Sure.

Allie Keys: Are you mad at them?

[Captain Walker shakes his head]

Allie Keys: But you'll fight with them just the same.

Captain Walker: That's our job.

Allie Keys: ...Grown-ups are weird.

Charlie Keys: You got a nice move to the post. That kid yesterday thought he could get one past you, but you were right there.

Allie Keys: What I do is I fool myself. I make myself believe that I'm really going to cover. Because *I* believe it, he believes it.

Charlie Keys: Then, how do you get yourself over to the post?

Allie Keys: I don't know. I'm afraid if I ever stop to think about it, it won't work anymore.

[two simultaneous, different conversations] John, Alien Visitor: I'll try to put this in terms that you commonly use. I'm a scientist. We were all scientists. We came here to learn about your world. Our idea was to find out everything: your history, your biology, everything. We came here to learn. We're not that different from you, genetically, biologically. But what you call evolution has changed us. We see things in you that we no longer recognize in ourselves.

Dr. Chet Wakeman: What do we know? They're this energy that can manifest itself in different ways: as the beings we've seen, as their crafts, as our thoughts. There's no right or wrong about them.

John, Alien Visitor: The whole concept of right and wrong was... alien to us. The idea that the things we were doing were cruel...

Dr. Chet Wakeman: They have no concept of kindness or cruelty. No way of seeing beyond the 'oneness' of all that energy...

John, Alien Visitor: ...to the separateness, the uniqueness, your ability to hate, to love, to feel. You have compassion, as well as cruelty. We-we lack both. Or that is, the traits lie dormant...

Dr. Chet Wakeman: ...in their brains. Like the animal that lives far back inside all of us. But an experience of something basic can awaken that primitive thing.

John, Alien Visitor: And that's what happened. Your grandmother, Sally. She took me in and showed me a great kindness.

Mary Crawford: Something could've touched one of them, something small and simple, and awakened this sense of what was missing. Something gone and half-remembered.

John, Alien Visitor: And so our greatest experiment began.

Mary Crawford: Could they put it back, this thing that had been bred out of them for eons and eons?

John, Alien Visitor: Your emotional core, your strength, your feeling, and our more evolved consciousness. Could we bring these two together? If we could do this, we would have the next...

Mary Crawford: ...step in the evolution of life.

John, Alien Visitor: [Looking at Allie] The experiment was an unqualified success.

["John", ACT 6, approx. 00:58:40]Chet Wakeman: What scared you? What did you see?Mary Crawford: It's like a walk through a minefield, isn't it?Chet Wakeman: What is?Mary Crawford: Life...y'know, you start out, there's just a few mines---childhood diseases, falls from high places---then you hit adolescence, and there's more mines---drugs, unprotected sex, drunk drivers, lonely kids with guns---and the older you get, the more mines you see...and all you're trying to do now, really, is to get to the other side of the field, but that's not possible, is it? No! because the more you look, the more mines you see and pretty soon you realize that there's nowhere left to step.Chet Wakeman: Mary...what did you see?Mary Crawford: What did I see? [pause] I saw where all the mines were. I saw everything I'd ever done. Everything that'd ever happened to me. I saw where all this would end. That's what Owen saw. That's what destroyed him. I'm not folding like my grandfather did. Did what I see frighten me? Of course it did. Will it stop me? No...everybody dies.